I recently decided to resub and try the game out again after having pre-ordered and played it briefly at launch, but ultimately deciding to stick with WoW.
I have normally tanked in games (played a Protection Paladin and a Protection Warrior in WoW during Wrath and Cataclysm, and played a Warrior tank in RIFT) and I'm probably going to want to the same in SWTOR. However, I'm not quite sure which class to choose. Now, being a big Star Wars fan I am most drawn to Force users, and Jedi/The Force/Lightsabers are a big part of what "makes" Star Wars for me. That basically narrows it down to 4 choices for me for a class: Jedi Knight (Guardian), Jedi Consular (Shadow), Sith Warrior (Juggernaut) and Sith Inquisitor (Assassin). That said I have a few questions regarding the storyline and playstyle for each (I believe the playstyles are the same for each pair?):
1) How is the general storyline for each class? Doing a bit of research it seems like the Consular storyline is thought to be boring; the Jedi Knight storyline is what would have been KOTOR 3; the Sith Warrior storyline is being a total ****** (sounds good to me! lol); I haven't actually seen that much about the Inquisitor's story, but I know from early access I wasn't too thrilled with being a "slave", although I don't know if that factors at all into the story later.
2) From a playstyle perspective, is one more in demand for general group and endgame content? There usually is never a "best" class, but guilds tend to favor certain combinations for PVE nonetheless.
2a) If I decided to not tank but DPS instead, how viable is Guardian/Juggernaut and Shadow/Assassin in the DPS role, and are DPS of those classes desired? Is the content like many other MMOs where melee is always at a severe disadvantage in fights?
3) How is the general playstyle for each, with regards to tanking? From what I've read, Shadow/Assassin seems to be more complicated than the others, with a lot of cooldown watching to help their survivability. Is the Guardian/Juggernaut more straightforward then in terms of complexity? I am not a big fan of very complex priority systems/rotations or having to watch a dozen things as a tank (to give you some more insight, I stopped tanking in WoW after they introduced the "active mitigation" mechanics for all tanks in Mists of Pandaria because I felt it was needless complexity that made tanking a lot less appealing). Also, as I level I would probably do so with a tanking build -- is one or the other of the classes able to tank effectively at lower levels or do they all have to wait until higher level to hold aggro?
Thank you for any suggestions/advice.